Tag Archives: Ku Klux Klan

This past weekend the KKK and the New Black Panther Party clashed in South Carolina. The Klan was protesting the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse. Whoever approved the rallies for both of of these groups at the same time must have lost their minds. According to reports the crowds at the rallies had about 2,000 people.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — With police officers watching from nearby rooftops and a din of racial slurs heard on the pavement below, members of the Ku Klux Klan and the New Black Panther Party appeared at dueling rallies outside the South Carolina State House on Saturday, eight days after officials here removed the Confederate battle flag from the Capitol grounds.

Despite sporadic scuffles and hours of inflammatory rhetoric from white and black demonstrators alike, the authorities largely maintained order and prevented any significant violence. The police made five arrests, and the South Carolina Department of Public Safety estimated that the State House crowd, including onlookers, had at one point swelled to about 2,000 people. They chanted — or at least heard — volleys of incendiary speech and shouts of “white power!” and “black power!”

Bystanders watched people wave flags celebrating Pan-Africanism, the Confederacy and the Nazi Party. And they watched as black demonstrators raised clenched fists, and white demonstrators performed Nazi salutes.

Before the flag came down Confederate flag defenders were saying that the flag was about heritage not hate. Yet at the rally the KKK were hollering white power and performing Nazi salutes while carrying the flag. That sounds like hate to me. The Klan didn’t wear their usual sheet and hoods. At Saturday’s rally they let you know who they were. They’re also the oldest terrorist group in the United States.

Saturday’s protesters, who were predominantly men, did not don the Klan’s traditional white hoods and robes. Even as they denied being members of a hate group, their message was a relentless one of white supremacy.

“This is my country,” one shouted at a group of black onlookers. “My ancestors founded this country!”

“Peace is over with,” said William Bader, who said he was a Kentucky resident and the imperial wizard of the Trinity White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. “There is no peace.”

Mr. Bader, who said he planned to wear his Klan regalia for a cross burning on Saturday night, added, “What do I want to see happen? White revolution is the only solution.”